All About Riflescope Reticles
Circle/CQT/CQC:
These used to be nearly exclusive residents of the realm of shotgun scopes but someone figured out that they make brilliant combat reticles as they're super fast and easy to use. Put your target in the circle and kill it. Simple. The open design is good for situational awareness as well.
Now we're starting to see really clever things like circle reticles being placed in the second focal plane and a secondary crosshair or scaled reticle being placed in the first focal plane in the same scope. This in theory enables the shooter to engage long range precision targets as well as deal with high intensity combat at conversational or hollerin' distances. That combination is finding more and more appreciation within the 3-gun world as well but still has its home in genuinely deadly use cases. This is a case of everything and the kitchen sink. It's not going to be perfect for most anything except for giving someone in battle or specific sorts of competition shooting a leg up if they're inclined to get well drilled with its employment.
Target Dot:
This may consist of a simple dot in the center of the field of view but is more commonly combined with a fine crosshair. The dot may cover anything from 1/8moa to 3moa or more. These are popular with many sorts of target and varmint shooters. The tiny dot moving over your target gives an easy to see and fast to pick up signal to the brain to pull the trigger while the fine crosshairs give an aid in not canting the rifle.
In metallic silhouette competition these are wildly popular especially in combination with very high magnification scopes that are otherwise very difficult for the average shooter to use. Varmint hunters seem to really like the hair:dot system as well as many target disciplines which go by X count or group size or both. Many of those same shooters eschew the dot as it can obscure small aim points, and lively conversations on the matter around the water cooler can often be heard where they're used.
Christmas Tree:
These are a more recent development as far as riflescopes go but have some history in other realms. These have gained significant popularity across the shooting world in recent years. These consist normally of a first focal plane mil-scale cross-hair reticle which is then decorated with elevation and windage stadia in something of a pyramid below the primary horizontal cross-hair.
While pretty busy in the eye these reticles allow for the user to hold off from the center of the target to account for range, wind and movement without having to twist the turrets. That makes these a potentially incredibly fast scope to use particularly on ultra challenging PRS courses because you can transition from close targets to far targets without having to tinker with your scopes turrets and account for movement and wind at the same time. Horus has come up with a pretty big selection of this type of reticle.
When selecting this type of scope reticle for use it's important to know about how much training you'll need to do to be proficient with it as well as picking the design that well suits your needs. These make a pretty marginal scope for shooting for groups or X's in competition. They're fantastic for speedy target acquisition and engagement in tactical and simulated tactical pursuits. Some have used them for long range hunting pursuits with what seems to be astonishing success. The author isn't sure if that's an emergent property of the tool and the use case benefitting a more or less average shooter, or if it's still a case of the shooter being incredibly skilled and the equipment not hurting their success or some other interesting mix of things.
Ballistic Drop Compensating/Hunter Ranging:
Ballistic Drop Compensating (BDC) reticles come with additional intersecting lines on the vertical post that correspond to various ranges based on your muzzle velocity and bullet choice. These are fine for short to intermediate ranges but rapidly lose veracity as range increases. Up to about 400-500 yards they're great but after that actual ballistics should be referred to to assure a humane harvest of your target animal.
Some of these reticles like the Bushnell 30/30 (which appears to be a regular duplex until you find out it's first focal plane) are meant specifically for deer hunters so they can quickly range their target. There's a long running debate in some circles about whether including ranging and distance compensation features in a hunting scope is really worthwhile or if it'd be better to either not have them or to get a scope with those features fully implemented, like a mil-scale scope.
While mil-scale reticles and MOA scale reticles have their secondary line intersections at precisely equal angular distances, BDC type reticles almost uniformly do not place the secondary aim points at even intervals. This makes them more difficult to train on, memorize and apply to new situations and environments. BDC reticles are generally limited to ~.5km distances (with some very notable exceptions including sniper scopes like the MST-100) and should be employed with the understanding that things like air temperature and barometric pressure really start to matter after that.
For people with a small area of operations and a mission profile that allows for shots being limited to 500m or under these are actually pretty good options for shooting at dinner. For target use, they're generally inappropriate but like a screwdriver handle can become a hammer, a BDC scope can be pressed into service as a target scope with some performance consequences.
SVD:
A fairly unique reticle that's more or less limited to eastern bloc Soviet aligned countries' sniper rifles and is very similar to some new and innovative custom reticles (THLR.NO for example). This reticle is actually a series of them. There's a ranging box meant for use with human and human sized targets to provide rapid range estimation. There are chevrons which provide hold-overs and there is a horizontal mil-scale for hold-offs and whatever else you find you need them for.
While being possibly the foundation of the ideal universal reticle the SVD reticle just hasn't caught on with western shooters like those above have. It's not meant for precision but instead, and in a very Soviet way, for combat. It's meant to allow marginally trained designated marksman to put reasonably accurate fire against human and materiel targets from range with the least amount of hassle (training) possible.
Where western armies developed doctrine that used snipers as force multipliers and intelligence gathering resources, the Soviets seemed less interested in having front line troops reporting intel back up and more happy to have them just go ahead and engage the enemy. Again, pretty standard Soviet thinking and they developed the PSO-1 (SVD) reticle specifically for this mission. They really did understand ever since WWII that effective use of large numbers of designated marksman does sap the heck out of your enemies will to fight and their ability to freely move around and this sort of reticle is ideal for that. It's not very good at all as a target reticle for any pursuit where you're counting group size or X's but like everything, can be pressed into service with consequences.
Choosing the Right Reticle:
First: Remember that a fine crosshair is about the standard minimum. Every reticle feature or element that you add in after that will either increase the cost of your final product, orient your scope for use in one pursuit or another or force the manufacturer to reduce its quality to maintain profitability. So, keep it as simple as you can and don't buy what you won't use. We all want the whizz-bang-est scope in the world. It's nice to own the best when the best is measured by its cost, makes you feel rich. In this case though the best is that which accomplishes the mission without costing you anything extra.
While you're shopping around decide if you need first or second focal plane first. This will be the thing that limits your available selection the most. If you shoot competitions at unknown ranges then first focal plane is almost dictated if you want to not have to lug around a laser rangefinder. If you shoot in competitions where group size is important then you'll probably be best served by second focal plane. That's a good rule of thumb but not gospel, so think about it and see what others are using in the match you want to shoot before you make a purchase.
Other competitors are going to on average have a set of features in common and are your best source of comparative shopping especially since they'll usually be pretty generous about letting your look through and compare different brands and models. Hunting at close to intermediate (
After you've figured out what purpose you're putting this gun to we can start figuring out if you need ranging capability and from there if you need advanced features like hold-overs and hold-offs and if they need to be in even intervals or not. If you don't need ranging capability, don't get it. It's just a distraction in the image if you're not using it. If you don't need BDC, don't get it. If you need a target dot, get one. In short, get what you need first. Then look at wants.
Below is a list of some of the reticles of the authors scopes and what guns they're on and some of my reasons for choosing them. These are representative of the world at large in most cases and will hopefully provide some context.
Mean Game Hunting Rifle, .30-06:
I use this for hunting in dense woods for bear and hog. Low magnification and a fine crosshair make for a rifle easy to use in bright light but not so much in low light which limits my hunting hours. Low mag is good for situational awareness. The K3 is steel tube and very rugged but it is getting long in the tooth and will eventually be replaced with something like a 3x28mm.
Metallic Silhouette Match Rifle, 7BR: Weaver T24 24x44mm AO fine crosshair & 1/8MOA dot.
Super high magnification (24x), fixed power and adjustable objective with target turrets. The thin crosshair helps me avoid canting the rifle without obscuring much of the image. The target dot makes for instinctive trigger pulling. When the dot covers some section of the metal target, shoot. Silhouette competition is done standing up without shooting aids like glove/jacket/sling and we only have to knock the target over so a hit anywhere on it is often all we really care about. Super high magnification helps me keep only 1 target in the scope at a time.
Lots of downsides makes this a bad choice for a beginner and a catastrophic choice for things like deer hunting in the woods. This is not for everyone but is popular in target sports. They're super popular with long range varmint hunters as well. It's sometimes a bit much for me but usually it's helpful to have this configuration.
Long Range Precision Match Rifle, .223rem: US Optics ST-10 TPAL MPR reticle.
This rifle is used from 200-1000m to engage metal gongs at known distances under time pressure. The MPR reticle has extreme flexibility in the reticle without getting to be a Christmas Tree. There are subtends in there that aren't actually listed, they're inferred by the user, and so this reticle takes a bit more training than a simple mil-dot system. Fixed 10x magnification is easy to use when scanning along a ridge line for concealed targets without being too much.
I have also used a 16x42 on this rifle and found that that was often too much magnification when you're moving from target to target in some stages, especially those that cover a lot of horizontal space. The smallness of the scope keeps a compact package without too much weight though the USO scopes are very heavy to begin with so the weight benefit is not that much over something like a Vortex Viper PST 6-24x.
Long Range Precision Match Rifle, .308Win: US Optics ER-25 5-25x58mm MPR reticle.
This is the big brother to my .223 match gun. If winds are too heavy for .223 I use this rifle. Having the same reticle as my ST-10 equipped .223 rifle means I have less to train for. The ER-25 is a 5-25x58mm while the ST-10 is a 10x37mm so the ER-25 is a FFP which is an irrelevance for the ST-10 since it's a fixed magnification scope. Being able to drop the magnification on the ER-25 to 5x makes targets scattered horizontally easier to find (greater field of view) and then you can just zoom in to 20-25x. 25x is too much magnification for most things so it rarely sees full magnification.
This scope is best left to tactical and tacticool sorts of pursuits in my book. It's far too heavy to be optimal for most hunting uses. This scope occasionally will see my big gun for shooting up to a mile against 2MOA steel gong targets but that's mostly because it has the adjustment range and the magnification, not because it has the perfect reticle for that. This is a super heavy and large and expensive scope.
Plains Deer Rifle, 7mm Rem Mag: Vintage 3-9x37mm 30/30 Duplex FFP.
This rifle is explicitly for shooting at deer-like beasts in open grasslands. Shots can be from 10yrds to >600yrds. The 30/30 reticle is a standard duplex reticle in the first focal plane. It's meant to match a 30 inch width regardless of magnification which is about the same size that an adult deer is long from chest to butt. You can tell by what portion of the reticle is taken up by a deer about how far that deer is from you but not with high precision. It's handy and light and gives a feature I find useful while having snag free low capped turrets, fixed parallax and an uncomplicated reticle. Uncomplicated scope, uncomplicated rifle, uncomplicated reticle. The glass isn't as bright as modern scopes but it still does a good job and is very rugged.
Alpine Big Game Hunting Rifle, 7mm Rem Mag: Leupold VX2 3-9x33mm Duplex SFP.
This rifle is explicitly for shooting at deer in the California mountains. Shots can be from 10 feet to 500 yards. The duplex reticle is in the second focal plane. It's just a basic rifle scope on a basic rifle. I find it useful to have snag free low capped turrets, fixed parallax and an uncomplicated reticle. This rifle gets walked over rocky terrain in high mountains so it needs rugged, light and simple with a crosshair that works high and low light and doesn't needlessly obscure the image.
MeccaStreisand is a long time competitive and recreational shooter, wildcatter, computer geek, exterior ballistics geek, inventor, outdoorsman, writer, husband and father. With over 20 years of experience in local and regional airgun, handgun, rifle and shotgun competitions of all sorts he competes currently in high power and smallbore metallic silhouette in the western states and long range precision and tactical matches throughout northern and central California. In his free time he wishes that he had enough free time to do anything other than wish for more free time.
These used to be nearly exclusive residents of the realm of shotgun scopes but someone figured out that they make brilliant combat reticles as they're super fast and easy to use. Put your target in the circle and kill it. Simple. The open design is good for situational awareness as well.
Now we're starting to see really clever things like circle reticles being placed in the second focal plane and a secondary crosshair or scaled reticle being placed in the first focal plane in the same scope. This in theory enables the shooter to engage long range precision targets as well as deal with high intensity combat at conversational or hollerin' distances. That combination is finding more and more appreciation within the 3-gun world as well but still has its home in genuinely deadly use cases. This is a case of everything and the kitchen sink. It's not going to be perfect for most anything except for giving someone in battle or specific sorts of competition shooting a leg up if they're inclined to get well drilled with its employment.
Target Dot:
This may consist of a simple dot in the center of the field of view but is more commonly combined with a fine crosshair. The dot may cover anything from 1/8moa to 3moa or more. These are popular with many sorts of target and varmint shooters. The tiny dot moving over your target gives an easy to see and fast to pick up signal to the brain to pull the trigger while the fine crosshairs give an aid in not canting the rifle.
In metallic silhouette competition these are wildly popular especially in combination with very high magnification scopes that are otherwise very difficult for the average shooter to use. Varmint hunters seem to really like the hair:dot system as well as many target disciplines which go by X count or group size or both. Many of those same shooters eschew the dot as it can obscure small aim points, and lively conversations on the matter around the water cooler can often be heard where they're used.
Christmas Tree:
These are a more recent development as far as riflescopes go but have some history in other realms. These have gained significant popularity across the shooting world in recent years. These consist normally of a first focal plane mil-scale cross-hair reticle which is then decorated with elevation and windage stadia in something of a pyramid below the primary horizontal cross-hair.
While pretty busy in the eye these reticles allow for the user to hold off from the center of the target to account for range, wind and movement without having to twist the turrets. That makes these a potentially incredibly fast scope to use particularly on ultra challenging PRS courses because you can transition from close targets to far targets without having to tinker with your scopes turrets and account for movement and wind at the same time. Horus has come up with a pretty big selection of this type of reticle.
When selecting this type of scope reticle for use it's important to know about how much training you'll need to do to be proficient with it as well as picking the design that well suits your needs. These make a pretty marginal scope for shooting for groups or X's in competition. They're fantastic for speedy target acquisition and engagement in tactical and simulated tactical pursuits. Some have used them for long range hunting pursuits with what seems to be astonishing success. The author isn't sure if that's an emergent property of the tool and the use case benefitting a more or less average shooter, or if it's still a case of the shooter being incredibly skilled and the equipment not hurting their success or some other interesting mix of things.
Ballistic Drop Compensating/Hunter Ranging:
Ballistic Drop Compensating (BDC) reticles come with additional intersecting lines on the vertical post that correspond to various ranges based on your muzzle velocity and bullet choice. These are fine for short to intermediate ranges but rapidly lose veracity as range increases. Up to about 400-500 yards they're great but after that actual ballistics should be referred to to assure a humane harvest of your target animal.
Some of these reticles like the Bushnell 30/30 (which appears to be a regular duplex until you find out it's first focal plane) are meant specifically for deer hunters so they can quickly range their target. There's a long running debate in some circles about whether including ranging and distance compensation features in a hunting scope is really worthwhile or if it'd be better to either not have them or to get a scope with those features fully implemented, like a mil-scale scope.
While mil-scale reticles and MOA scale reticles have their secondary line intersections at precisely equal angular distances, BDC type reticles almost uniformly do not place the secondary aim points at even intervals. This makes them more difficult to train on, memorize and apply to new situations and environments. BDC reticles are generally limited to ~.5km distances (with some very notable exceptions including sniper scopes like the MST-100) and should be employed with the understanding that things like air temperature and barometric pressure really start to matter after that.
For people with a small area of operations and a mission profile that allows for shots being limited to 500m or under these are actually pretty good options for shooting at dinner. For target use, they're generally inappropriate but like a screwdriver handle can become a hammer, a BDC scope can be pressed into service as a target scope with some performance consequences.
SVD:
A fairly unique reticle that's more or less limited to eastern bloc Soviet aligned countries' sniper rifles and is very similar to some new and innovative custom reticles (THLR.NO for example). This reticle is actually a series of them. There's a ranging box meant for use with human and human sized targets to provide rapid range estimation. There are chevrons which provide hold-overs and there is a horizontal mil-scale for hold-offs and whatever else you find you need them for.
While being possibly the foundation of the ideal universal reticle the SVD reticle just hasn't caught on with western shooters like those above have. It's not meant for precision but instead, and in a very Soviet way, for combat. It's meant to allow marginally trained designated marksman to put reasonably accurate fire against human and materiel targets from range with the least amount of hassle (training) possible.
Where western armies developed doctrine that used snipers as force multipliers and intelligence gathering resources, the Soviets seemed less interested in having front line troops reporting intel back up and more happy to have them just go ahead and engage the enemy. Again, pretty standard Soviet thinking and they developed the PSO-1 (SVD) reticle specifically for this mission. They really did understand ever since WWII that effective use of large numbers of designated marksman does sap the heck out of your enemies will to fight and their ability to freely move around and this sort of reticle is ideal for that. It's not very good at all as a target reticle for any pursuit where you're counting group size or X's but like everything, can be pressed into service with consequences.
Choosing the Right Reticle:
First: Remember that a fine crosshair is about the standard minimum. Every reticle feature or element that you add in after that will either increase the cost of your final product, orient your scope for use in one pursuit or another or force the manufacturer to reduce its quality to maintain profitability. So, keep it as simple as you can and don't buy what you won't use. We all want the whizz-bang-est scope in the world. It's nice to own the best when the best is measured by its cost, makes you feel rich. In this case though the best is that which accomplishes the mission without costing you anything extra.
While you're shopping around decide if you need first or second focal plane first. This will be the thing that limits your available selection the most. If you shoot competitions at unknown ranges then first focal plane is almost dictated if you want to not have to lug around a laser rangefinder. If you shoot in competitions where group size is important then you'll probably be best served by second focal plane. That's a good rule of thumb but not gospel, so think about it and see what others are using in the match you want to shoot before you make a purchase.
Other competitors are going to on average have a set of features in common and are your best source of comparative shopping especially since they'll usually be pretty generous about letting your look through and compare different brands and models. Hunting at close to intermediate (
After you've figured out what purpose you're putting this gun to we can start figuring out if you need ranging capability and from there if you need advanced features like hold-overs and hold-offs and if they need to be in even intervals or not. If you don't need ranging capability, don't get it. It's just a distraction in the image if you're not using it. If you don't need BDC, don't get it. If you need a target dot, get one. In short, get what you need first. Then look at wants.
Below is a list of some of the reticles of the authors scopes and what guns they're on and some of my reasons for choosing them. These are representative of the world at large in most cases and will hopefully provide some context.
Mean Game Hunting Rifle, .30-06:
I use this for hunting in dense woods for bear and hog. Low magnification and a fine crosshair make for a rifle easy to use in bright light but not so much in low light which limits my hunting hours. Low mag is good for situational awareness. The K3 is steel tube and very rugged but it is getting long in the tooth and will eventually be replaced with something like a 3x28mm.
Metallic Silhouette Match Rifle, 7BR: Weaver T24 24x44mm AO fine crosshair & 1/8MOA dot.
Super high magnification (24x), fixed power and adjustable objective with target turrets. The thin crosshair helps me avoid canting the rifle without obscuring much of the image. The target dot makes for instinctive trigger pulling. When the dot covers some section of the metal target, shoot. Silhouette competition is done standing up without shooting aids like glove/jacket/sling and we only have to knock the target over so a hit anywhere on it is often all we really care about. Super high magnification helps me keep only 1 target in the scope at a time.
Lots of downsides makes this a bad choice for a beginner and a catastrophic choice for things like deer hunting in the woods. This is not for everyone but is popular in target sports. They're super popular with long range varmint hunters as well. It's sometimes a bit much for me but usually it's helpful to have this configuration.
Long Range Precision Match Rifle, .223rem: US Optics ST-10 TPAL MPR reticle.
This rifle is used from 200-1000m to engage metal gongs at known distances under time pressure. The MPR reticle has extreme flexibility in the reticle without getting to be a Christmas Tree. There are subtends in there that aren't actually listed, they're inferred by the user, and so this reticle takes a bit more training than a simple mil-dot system. Fixed 10x magnification is easy to use when scanning along a ridge line for concealed targets without being too much.
I have also used a 16x42 on this rifle and found that that was often too much magnification when you're moving from target to target in some stages, especially those that cover a lot of horizontal space. The smallness of the scope keeps a compact package without too much weight though the USO scopes are very heavy to begin with so the weight benefit is not that much over something like a Vortex Viper PST 6-24x.
Long Range Precision Match Rifle, .308Win: US Optics ER-25 5-25x58mm MPR reticle.
This is the big brother to my .223 match gun. If winds are too heavy for .223 I use this rifle. Having the same reticle as my ST-10 equipped .223 rifle means I have less to train for. The ER-25 is a 5-25x58mm while the ST-10 is a 10x37mm so the ER-25 is a FFP which is an irrelevance for the ST-10 since it's a fixed magnification scope. Being able to drop the magnification on the ER-25 to 5x makes targets scattered horizontally easier to find (greater field of view) and then you can just zoom in to 20-25x. 25x is too much magnification for most things so it rarely sees full magnification.
This scope is best left to tactical and tacticool sorts of pursuits in my book. It's far too heavy to be optimal for most hunting uses. This scope occasionally will see my big gun for shooting up to a mile against 2MOA steel gong targets but that's mostly because it has the adjustment range and the magnification, not because it has the perfect reticle for that. This is a super heavy and large and expensive scope.
Plains Deer Rifle, 7mm Rem Mag: Vintage 3-9x37mm 30/30 Duplex FFP.
This rifle is explicitly for shooting at deer-like beasts in open grasslands. Shots can be from 10yrds to >600yrds. The 30/30 reticle is a standard duplex reticle in the first focal plane. It's meant to match a 30 inch width regardless of magnification which is about the same size that an adult deer is long from chest to butt. You can tell by what portion of the reticle is taken up by a deer about how far that deer is from you but not with high precision. It's handy and light and gives a feature I find useful while having snag free low capped turrets, fixed parallax and an uncomplicated reticle. Uncomplicated scope, uncomplicated rifle, uncomplicated reticle. The glass isn't as bright as modern scopes but it still does a good job and is very rugged.
Alpine Big Game Hunting Rifle, 7mm Rem Mag: Leupold VX2 3-9x33mm Duplex SFP.
This rifle is explicitly for shooting at deer in the California mountains. Shots can be from 10 feet to 500 yards. The duplex reticle is in the second focal plane. It's just a basic rifle scope on a basic rifle. I find it useful to have snag free low capped turrets, fixed parallax and an uncomplicated reticle. This rifle gets walked over rocky terrain in high mountains so it needs rugged, light and simple with a crosshair that works high and low light and doesn't needlessly obscure the image.
MeccaStreisand is a long time competitive and recreational shooter, wildcatter, computer geek, exterior ballistics geek, inventor, outdoorsman, writer, husband and father. With over 20 years of experience in local and regional airgun, handgun, rifle and shotgun competitions of all sorts he competes currently in high power and smallbore metallic silhouette in the western states and long range precision and tactical matches throughout northern and central California. In his free time he wishes that he had enough free time to do anything other than wish for more free time.
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